About 800,000 people in the United States population suffer from insulin deficiency diabetes (also known as juvenile or type I diabetes), and about 30,000 new cases arise each year. Further, an extremely large and rapidly increasing number of patients have forms of type II diabetes (also called adult onset or insulin-resistance diabetes), in this population at a level of epidemic proportions that cause pancreatic exhaustion and insulin insufficiency.
The abnormally high blood glucose (hyperglycemia) that characterizes diabetes, if left untreated, results in a variety of pathological conditions, for example, non-healing peripheral vascular ulcers, retinal damage leading to blindness, and kidney failure. Diabetes of both types I and II are treated with insulin injection in response to blood glucose levels determined by patient glucose self-monitoring, although not all type II patients progress to requiring insulin therapy. Typically, multiple doses of insulin are delivered by the patient per day. Severe pathological consequences of diabetes are correlated with less rigorous control of blood glucose level.